Strickland, Kattie

ORAL HISTORY OF KATTIE LUE STRICKLAND
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Rick Greene
Significant Productions
July 1, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. ALBRECHT: What kind of job did you have when you came up here?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I first come up here, I hired in to J.A. Jones, sweeping, some raking up sawdust and other just sweeping it up, over and over and over. That was my job.
MR. ALBRECHT: But that paid better than working in the library at Auburn?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. But when we first started working up here we were making $27.00 a week. And then $37.00, if I worked overtime.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have an opportunity to work overtime quite a bit?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked every Saturday, was overtime.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that about it. Where did you live when you came to Oak Ridge? Tell me a little bit about where you lived. I know it was in a hutment and there were other women in there, so tell us a little bit about where you lived and how many women were in there, that sort of thing.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, the hut we were in there was four ‘cause the room was pretty big and had four beds. From that we moved in the pen, is they called it. Or the guards would take the women.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, you were in the area protected by the guards, did you have a curfew? Did you have to be back in by a certain time, that kind of thing?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, we could go out any time, but at night, they locked the gate. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: So, at the same time, where was your husband living?
MRS. STRICKLAND: He was living in a hut.
MR. ALBRECHT: But you couldn’t live together.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No.
MR. ALBRECHT: Address that a little bit. In your own words, you both lived in huts, we couldn’t live together. I was in the pen. Just kind of string the whole story together for me.
MRS. STRICKLAND: He was in hut and we was in the pen. Of course I could go to his hut and could stay until 10 or 11 o’clock, and then we had to leave. We had to run back, that’s when I was living in the huts. That’s it.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Great. How many men were in the hut that your husband lived in?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Four.
MR. ALBRECHT: Four, okay. Did you and your husband eat in the cafeteria? Is that how you got your meals?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked in the cafeteria, but I didn’t eat the food. I ate it one time and it made me sick. So I started cooking in the hut.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell us a little bit about cooking in a hut. Now we know there wasn’t a nice cook stove in there, there wasn’t a nice range. How did you cook in a hut?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, we had a big heater and when it gets red hot I make up my biscuits and turn them to the back and they’d brown and then when they were brown on the bottom, I’d turn them to the front and they’d brown. They browned pretty. (Laughter) FBI come and eat dinner with me and my husband.
MR. ALBRECHT: The FBI? Is that what you said?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want to do something here, I want you to, this was the pan you used right, for the biscuits?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want you to kind of tell me the story again and I want you to hold this up and say, “This is the pan I made the biscuits in”, when you tell a story like that. I think that would be a wonderful way to do that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Which way? You want me to hold it like this?
MR. ALBRECHT: Well, you can just start telling the story and then just kind of hold it like that. So talk about, hold it down in your lap like I’ve got this right now. Can you see that? Or do you want to keep that out of the picture and then let her lift it up?
MR. GREENE: Yeah, I’ve got her pretty wide. So yeah, we’re good.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. So once you start talking you can lift it up. Tell me again about baking the biscuits on the stove and how you had to turn it. Then you can show us how you turned the pan.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I baked my biscuits on the stove. I turned them up to brown them on the bottom, and then when they brown on the bottom, I hold them and let them brown on the top.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want you to say, “And this is the pan, this is the actual pan I used.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: And this is the pan I used years ago, baking biscuits.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great.
MR. GREENE: I have a question. How did you keep them from falling out?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, I had a stick kind of, you know. I propped it behind the pan from the floor and they baked. And then when I turned them, I propped the stick right here, and they browned on the bottom.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, I’ll get that pan out of your hands now. That’s a great way to show that pan off. Tell me, whoops, I lost my microphone here. Mr. Minter told me that you use to make biscuits to give to the guards so that they would look the other way, so you could go out at night. Tell us a little about that please. (Laughter)
MRS. STRICKLAND: The FBI told me I could stay with my husband until 10 o’clock or 11, except them young guards come by there and make you get out. He told me when I went home to bring my marriage certificate and they couldn’t put me out. Said ‘cause he know how it feel if somebody came making his wife get out of where he was.
MR. ALBRECHT: So was there any truth to the story that you baked biscuits so they would look the other way? Did you bribe the guards?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, I didn’t try to bribe them. (Laughter) They just smelled them.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great. I asked you about the cafeteria and you said you didn’t eat there but one time because it made you sick.
MRS. STRICKLAND: One time.
MR. ALBRECHT: You said it was bad. How many cafeterias did they have for blacks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: The cafeteria was for everybody. And I worked with J.A. Jones in the cafeteria and I still couldn’t eat the food, for what they had.
MR. ALBRECHT: Was it because of the way it was fixed or because it was food you weren’t use to eating?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I just couldn’t eat it. Least I was afraid to eat any more ‘cause it made me sick.
MR. ALBRECHT: So tell me again, one of the questions that Will had on here, he specifically said on here, “How did you visit your husband?” So that was an issue of you could stay until a certain hour and then the guards started letting you stay, was that it? Tell us a little bit about how you got to visit with your husband.
MRS. STRICKLAND: They know to go and leave about 8 o’clock, the women. So they beat the guards coming to put them out. So my husband come to see me sometimes. One time he come to the pen and he got hung in the top of the wire. We had wire way up. I heard somebody bumping out there and I went out there and his shirt was hung. I said, “What you doing out here? You trying to get into the pen or something?” (Laughter) I got him unhung and went to his hut.
MR. GREENE: Chris, let me. I’m not sure why it was that you all couldn’t stay together. Could you explain that a little bit, why y’all were living in different places?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well at that time, it was so many until they called it protecting the women in the pens with the guards in there. They didn’t like women to stay. The men huts in one section and the women huts in another. When I first came, mine wasn’t far from my husband. All the men was on one side and the women was back on this side.
MR. GREENE: Was it just because they didn’t have enough housing? Was that the reason they separated you?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, women stayed with the men. All the men suppose to live in a hut with nothing but men. That’s why men and women couldn’t live. But we moved to the barrack and he let all married people stay in the barrack. Thank God that was good. From there we moved back up here to Roane Anderson.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you have to live in the pen before you got to go to the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well we lived in the barracks about a year and a half before we had to move to Roane Anderson up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about the huts? How long were you in the huts before you got to go to the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oh, about three years.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Back up and tell us that. Say, “We lived in the huts for about three years before we got to go to the barracks.” And tell it like that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We lived in the huts for about three years before we went to the barrack.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you got to go to the barracks, was that when the war ended?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Let me see. I was working when he called and said the war was over. We were still living in the barrack.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’ve got another question here. This is on another subject, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there is a story behind this or he wouldn’t have put this in there. He says, “How did you make extra money?”
MRS. STRICKLAND: (Laughter) Well, cigarettes were lost. And all my husband’s friends didn’t smoke. They would buy them and give them to my husband. I had a great big ol’ freezer lined with tin. I put about 8 cases of beer, watermelons, sweet milk, and we made extra money by selling the beer.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where did you get the beer to sell?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We would come up here to uptown, I forgot what uptown is now, at that time it was Value Mart and you wasn’t allowed two cases. All my husband’s friends get him a case.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you had the beer distributorship.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had so much money. At night we’d pull the curtains and count it. We had the bed just covered with more money than I ever seen. Then we send it home.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s a wonderful story. Another thing he’s got on here, “Tell us about riding the bus.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, I told my mother we were riding the train every day to work. I didn’t want to tell her it was a freight train. We rode the freight train; we had to go about, about half to get on the train. He’d carry us there and some on the weekend. If you missed that load, you wait and catch the next load.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was it like when the weather was bad, in the winter and stuff, trying to get on that train?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oh, I be running so much snow weather I’d be, some come over my head. I’d run so fast to get on the train, some come over my shoes, over my head. Rain or shine, you had to be there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did anyone that you know, that you worked with or lived with in the huts or anything? The question here is did anyone get in trouble and how were they treated if they did get in trouble?
MRS. STRICKLAND: They would take them out the gate. Take them to Clinton, Kingston.
MR. ALBRECHT: Let’s start over, tell me, if you wouldn’t mind, if you’d say, “When people got in trouble…” or something like that so we know what you’re saying.
MRS. STRICKLAND: When people got in trouble, they would take them out the gate and take the badge and they couldn’t come back in.
MR. ALBRECHT: So they were just gone.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Just gone.
MR. ALBRECHT: When did, when were you able to send for your children to come up?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When it was? I don’t know what year when I went and brought them up here.
MRS. PATTERSON: First time, we came I think it was ’47. We came to live in ’48, ’49, I think it was.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, ’49 was when you came up here permanently.
MRS. PATTERSON: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: If you could relay that, that you were finally able to bring your children up in 1949.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I brought my children in 1949. In ’49.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have a home then?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We lived in the flattop. That’s when I brought my children up here. It had two rooms and a kitchen.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did it have sewers and running water? Did it have electricity?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had an ice box. When we were in the flattop we had a hot water heater and running water in the flattop.
MR. ALBRECHT: Quite an improvement over the huts.
MRS. STRICKLAND: That’s right.
MR. ALBRECHT: Let me look at my questions here. While I’m looking at these questions, thinking about it, I’m sure you’ve got some other stories, some things that you remember specifically about working during the project and so forth, that I hadn’t even thought about asking yet. Tell us some other stories.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked in the streakler part (???) and we swept them floors until it looked just like a looking glass and I was there when the motors start running. We were scared to death. All them belts went to running. Everybody was scared, but it turned out all right because they didn’t know that something would happen that would be wrong. I started not to come to work that day because it was going to be a sad day when the day come they turned it on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you or any of your friends really have any idea of what they were doing? What the whole project was about?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I sure didn’t ‘cause they said, “See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing”.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s good. Let’s do that one again, and say, “We didn’t know what all the project was about”, and tell us about the “See nothing. Say nothing.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: We didn’t know what all the projects were about ‘cause when you entered the gate, that sign sitting up there, “See nothing. Say nothing.” So we just worked.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great. You do a good job of working that into a statement where it covers the question. We have a lot of people that don’t do that so well. I appreciate you for that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: As much as I can remember.
MRS. ROBERSON: Ask her about giving a day toward the bomb.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok, good. Tell us about giving a day’s wages to help develop the bomb. What do you remember about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I give two days on the atomic bomb. I just got my stub.
MR. ALBRECHT: So say it again so it’s real plan. You worked for two days, but you gave up the pay for those two days to help…
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah, I gave up two days to help on the atomic bomb. Is that good enough?
MR. GREENE: Did you know what you were doing at the time? Did you know that it was going toward a bomb? How did they present it to you, this idea?
MRS. STRICKLAND: They had a sheet you signed, and it said, “For the atomic bomb.” And that’s all.
MRS. PATTERSON: Did you know what an atomic bomb was?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Some of them wouldn’t give nothing.
MRS. ROBERSON: You knew it was a bomb, Grandmamma?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah, they wanted everybody to donate a day’s wage to the atomic bomb.
MRS. PATTERSON: Did you know what an atomic bomb was?
MRS. STRICKLAND: All I know was, I heard them and I knew they was dangerous, but we donated.
MR. ALBRECHT: I got another question for you. It’s back to the living when you were in the pens and that kind of thing. I can’t remember if it was Mr. Minter that told me about this, but did you have any stories or did you hear about or help others get to be with husbands and boyfriends? I remember a story, something about lifting somebody over a fence. I sure want to hear that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I stayed in the pen with four women and I woke up and the guards had the light turned on me. He said, “You ain’t got no company now.” He said, “You’ll have some after a while.” And they come down that street running and cussing and sitting there talking. Got nothing on me. I’m going back. Few minutes later they all sneak back out. They say he got up on the bed when they go round searching you know. Looking all around the bed and didn’t see any woman in there. And they went back and stayed. Them guards sure wouldn’t get them out of the bed. You could hear them running down the plank walk, fussing and cussing. I never did.
MR. ALBRECHT: Was there, you and your husband sold beer. Was there other liquor available?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Happy Valley was over there with plenty of beer, and cigarettes too. But on Sunday, they just left it, not go down to the store; they’d buy it from us. We was selling $1.00 a bottle. Cigarettes, I sold cigarettes for $4.00 and he said he wanted one, and he had his girlfriend sitting there, and he said, “And give her one.” That was $4.00. We said we sold $2.00 a cigarette and that was $4.00 for two.
MRS. ROBERSON: One cigarette?
MR. ALBRECHT: For one cigarette?
MRS. STRICKLAND: One cigarette.
MR. ALBRECHT: Oh, jeez. No wonder you had money.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I opened the bills, but my hand just got tired. I said, “You got to count. You take it.” ‘Cause they’d be back by. He was amazed that the store down there then, but they wouldn’t buy it. But it be closed on the weekend. So they’d buy it up ‘cause they knew the store done be closed, but they wouldn’t buy nothing from the store. There would be so many people that it filled a hut full. Like you couldn’t stir, people wouldn’t know when a snake come up in here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Amazing. When you were working on the project, did you attend church? If so, where?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. When I got on swing shift, from 8 to 4, 4 to 12, 12 to 8 the next morning, when I swing off, then I be four days. Each one of us had a Sunday off a piece to go to church. I took the fourth Sunday ‘cause that’s when our church up here would be open. I had one Sunday off a month.
MR. ALBRECHT: What church was it that you attended?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oak Valley. Same church name as it is now.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Back it up and say, “I went to Oak Valley Church”, so we know what you’re talking about.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I went to Oak Valley Church.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you think when you finally found out what all these projects were all about? When you finally found out it was an atomic bomb? What were your thoughts about that? What did you think about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to think, but when they announced it was an atomic bomb. I kind of thought it was good. I said, “Well, we got an atomic bomb.” Now everybody got it. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: Kind of hard to guess when everybody said, “Hey. We made an atomic bomb.” Everybody probably looked at each other and said, “What’s an atomic bomb?” (Laughter)
MRS. STRICKLAND: Really I didn’t know what. (inaudible)
MR. ALBRECHT: What else?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I first come up here, it wasn’t nothing but plank walks and rats. We come here from work, they put that stuff out to kill them, they done have racked them up in piles. Walking down the walkway one would come out with his tail that long. I hadn’t never known. When you clean off then fields and have clean ground, then rats from the fields, oh my Lord. That was when we was at K-25. Plank walks and mud. ‘Bout really walked on the ground because everybody walked on the plank walks so they were muddy too. The people that came late, they came to a beautiful place. We came to a mess. Finally, it’s a beautiful place now.
MR. ALBRECHT: Talking about the planks that made me think of something. Oh, during the summer and during the winter those huts they weren’t insulated, they didn’t have, you know. Tell us a little about how cold was it? How hot did it get in the summer? It must have been brutal.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, they had them heaters in there you know. Every man had a blanket and a thing that ran around his bed, and around his bed. Those heaters really kept it hot in there. You had to open the door sometimes because you never could lock your door, you just go to work and left it open so the maids could come in and clean. One thing, we paid $1.50 a week and got our linens changed twice a week.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about in the summer? What was it like in the summer to live in those?
MRS. STRICKLAND: It was nice. We go to walk out in the shade trees. We had a good time.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do for recreation like in the evenings if you weren’t working? What did you typically do?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well they had a recreation and mess hall. You could go up and sit around.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do when you sat around?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had a car. We just rode around sometimes.
MR. ALBRECHT: You and your husband had a car, you say.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you just go ride around. Did you go into Knoxville?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. Uptown. After we moved up here, we had a car when we was at K-25. We had a Dodge. I never will forget it. My husband ran it up on a telegram pole. He didn’t hurt it. You know that big wide part on the telephone on them poles. He wasn’t paying no attention, and he was sitting up on that wire. The men’s come and pulled it down. We had a Dodge then. That was a pretty thing. So every year it got better and better. So we moved from the huts to the flattop and the flattops down here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now when you say “down here”, did you move into this house.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, we moved into the one right down the street here. Then the cars come too much down that a way. My daughter and they didn’t like down there. I moved there because the grass had come up there. And the grass down here had just been planted, you know. So the boys would stay here and they were going to Knoxville, and they said, “You want this house? Go on up to the office and put in for it now.” So I went up and put in for it. And we moved from down there to here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now by the time you lived in this house, the war was over, your children were with you, and did they go to school nearby? Where was it at? What can you tell me about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, mine went right over here to Scarboro. Some of them went to that school out yonder. What’s its name?
MRS. PATTERSON: Austin High School.
MRS. STRICKLAND: None of mine graduated there. they graduated over here. And the other’s, they made segregation and the others graduated uptown there.
MR. ALBRECHT: What other questions am I missing that I should be asking?
MRS. ROBERSON: I would like to know how she felt about being a black in Oak Ridge and being discriminated against and having to live separate. Not having the same rights as the general population.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Did you hear most of that? What was it like to be here as a black when there was segregation and you had separate facilities, and it wasn’t necessarily equal at all. Address that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We couldn’t eat from the, the 10 cent store had a thing where you come in and eat at and you could buy what we want to buy, but we had to take it in our hand and go. We couldn’t sit up on the stool. They didn’t want you to wash at their washhouse. And one day we walked and them Ku Klux Klan was over there and I was scared of those men. So I looked over and saw all the police over there. So we marched at the washhouse. You couldn’t do nothing like that. You couldn’t drink out the fountain or wash your clothes. It was just about like Alabama then with segregation.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned Ku Klux Klan was that during the war or after the war?
MRS. STRICKLAND: That was after the war.
MRS. PATTERSON: In the ‘60’s.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok.
MRS. STRICKLAND: But they still try to keep the black from the washer and dryers and from drinking the fountain. Sitting on the buses.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about like things on the bus, theaters, did you have to, and tell us again, like your starting over again, did they make you sit in a special place in the theater, did you have to ride in the back of the bus or whatever.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had to ride on the back of the bus when we were going to work, when they started running the buses. We still had to sit on the back. And the whites in the front. Until one day when this black lady sat down right behind the driver. And the bus was loaded and all but one man, just stood up there. And the bus driver just stopped and he told her she got to get up and let him sit down. She said, “I’m not getting up.” And then two colored men come from the back back there and they managed to get that driver so mad. He said, “You better stop.” You know we had a thing we could pull and he hadn’t been stopping. He said, “Whenever somebody pull that thing you better stop and let them off.” And he said, “Besides that you better change that shirt you got on.” This boy said, “I’ll get him right in the bottom.” And then, “I’ll get them right here.” Every day after that that man was so nice driving us to the plant. (Laughter) I was scared kind of because I didn’t know what those two black men were going to do. I mean they stopped the bus and told her to get up and she had to move and then they came from the back of the bus, you want her to get up and let the man sit down. That was when we were working at the plant too. Because we had to stop riding the train and start riding buses.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was better? Riding the train or riding the bus?
MRS. STRICKLAND: The bus.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’d think so.
MRS. STRICKLAND: See when done stood up when we got on and no seats. It was like a freight train, packing every booth until it got full. And then you stand up going and stand up coming back.
MR. ALBRECHT: After a long day of work, you have to stand up all the way back.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did it take to get from the home to the job riding the buses, or the trains, or whatever?
MRS. STRICKLAND: From where we load on at, it wasn’t too far. About a little further than that house down there, going down that street and then they brought us back there to all the huts and things. It wasn’t too far from there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Rick?
MR. GREENE: I guess the question that I have, you know one of the things that we’re looking at is that were trying to explore is the role that minorities, specifically blacks played in the Manhattan Project. What, as far as the contribution to that tremendous thing that was an accomplished. I mean it was an incredible thing that was accomplished here, when you look back at that, do you have a since of pride, how do you feel about that whole thing, knowing that you were a part of it? And I guess to expand that, how you see the role of blacks, how they contributed to that project.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I thought it was great. I was proud to be there because I had been here and I know all about it. God just brought us to it. Now in the cafeteria, when I worked, of course we packed lunches all night until about 4 o’clock in the morning. Didn’t have no separate of the black and white coming through the line getting their lunches for them to carry to work with them. But in other places, they couldn’t be with them.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you lived in the barracks and got to move out of the huts into the barracks, were the barracks, were they integrated, segregated. Were they all black people in the barracks.
MRS. STRICKLAND: It was black and white.
MR. ALBRECHT: So go back and tell us that. The barracks were integrated then.
MRS. STRICKLAND: The barracks were integrated. They were for the married peoples. If you wasn’t married, you couldn’t move in there.
MR. ALBRECHT: How much room did you have in the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had a big nice room, me and my husband. I never will forget it. I was coming home that next day and I woke up that morning and I shook with a hand, my little grandchild and I couldn’t come home. Because it was raining and snowing wet that morning fair. And I was getting ready to clock out and come out the buildings. Snow was knee deep. That’s the way it was back then. So the other people’s get that now. And we don’t get as much as we use to. I thought it was the baddest place I ever come to when I first got up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned the mud. I understand when it wasn’t muddy it was dusty. It was always one or the other.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Muddy, my goodness. It would be so muddy on the plank walk, I’d slip and get on the ground and walk to the huts.
MRS. ROBERSON: I was wondering if she had any relationships with any white people, during that particular time.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok, yeah, during the time of the project did you have any relationships with any white people?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes, all them men welding we were friendly with them. They were friendly with us. At night there wouldn’t be but two of us going to work at night to keep the cleaning stuff. We laugh and talk and everybody went to the same bathroom at the plant. You didn’t have no other choice.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you didn’t have separate restrooms for white and for colored then, as the signs said at the time.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No. 200 around the building. I clean 150, and my friend cleaned another 50. There wasn’t maybe ten that was in what we had to do. I didn’t do nothing much. Just wanted to get in there and sleep. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: Valeria, you’re a good source of questions. What else have you got there?
MRS. ROBERSON: How did it feel to be away from your daughters for all that time?
MRS. STRICKLAND: My children?
MRS. ROBERSON: Yes.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Goodness.
MRS. ROBERSON: Did it bother you?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I found out where we were going, I went to crying. I was crying for so far from my children. When I got use to it. It wasn’t as far as I thought. Oh, I missed my children. Maybe if I never got up here. My uncle was here from Florida when my husband came home and she said, “I ain’t going to keep the children. You’ve got to stay here.” She wanted me to be there. He said, “You let that girl go on back with her husband. And you keep the children.” Her brother did. She decided to keep the children and I came on back with my husband when he came back. He would come pretty regular. He sent his check home every week. I go to the Western Union and the lady said, “You just lucky.” She said, “What kind of man you got? I don’t want to be nosy, but is it your boyfriend or your husband?” I said, “That’s my husband.” She said, “He’s the best husband I have ever seen. He don’t miss sending that home every week.” I go to the Western Union there down at the college. I worked in the main library there. I go there and that check would be there.
MR. ALBRECHT: That was with him making a lot more money and you were still making money. Were you able to save money? Where did the money go?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, sent ours back home and Momma put it in the bank. And a boy came from over where we was and every week my husband and I had a lot of money you know. You could buy a ticket for food, because he would drink it up and gamble it off. He said, “How do you save money in a place like Auburn?” Because we had some money when we came up here, in the bank. And we sent every cent we made home. Momma put it in the bank. The money wasn’t kept. I just wore blue jeans and khaki pants to work. I maybe had a piece or two I put on the weekends. But people were stealing stuff so bad, we went to Chattanooga and got a trunk and a chain. My husband had to carry a trunk to the depot. There were so many in a room. And when they leave to go on to work they have to check out and leave. Shoot, they got all them folks stuff when they be gone. So we didn’t buy nothing much. What we had we wanted to keep it, so we put it in the trunk and locked it to the post of the bed. My husband said, “They can’t carry this bed down to the depot.” (Laughter) A lot of them were doing that. Folks go on to work. And they’d pack up their things and be gone.
MR. ALBRECHT: When the project, the Manhattan Project kind of wound down, the bomb had been built and so forth and a lot of people were leaving at that point, what made you decided to stay here instead of going back to Auburn, Alabama?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I like it here then. I liked it up here and I didn’t want to go back down there, so, we decided we would stay on here. I didn’t give it a thought about going back. My children also loved it up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: You had your family here by then.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: We’ve got about four minutes left on this particular tape before we put another one in. Anything else you can think of that we should ask? Valeria, I appreciate, I think more of the nuts and bolts. You hit on more the emotional things. So I appreciate your input.
MRS. STRICKLAND: She’s got pretty good thinkers. We wasn’t making much when we started until we got a union. When we got the union the boss man told me, “You sign right down there when you go down there.” They let us go down to the office and sign we were here. I said, (inaudible) “You fool!” (Laughter) he said, “Come here, Kattie Strickland. Where you sign at?” I said, “Right there.” “You fool! I told you to sign.” I didn’t do that to Dale. He was a good farmer. We drunk up (inaudible). Both of them gave us a big party. Down here to the camp operation and the boy would say, “Let’s drink up and (inaudible).” So we got a CIO and then we got more. My farmer told me, he said, “You don’t,” he said, “The white ladies going to take your job and what you’re doing.” A white lady bought me. She was so old we helped her every night. We had to clean up her (inaudible) because she couldn’t do it. And she bought me and my father ‘bout had a fit. He said, “They’re taking all my best hands, making me keep the building clean.” And the lady, she was so old, he begged her to go and let me stay. And she could hardly get around and she wouldn’t hardly do it. So she bought me. But because I stayed with the plant so long, they tried to get me back, but I wouldn’t go. I was enjoying doing what I was doing after I had quit working at the plant.
MR. ALBRECHT: What were you doing when you quit working for the plant?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I was working for MSI.
MR. ALBRECHT: What is that? I’m sorry.
MRS. STRICKLAND: MSI and then I worked for JA Jones, Damage Moore Company. Then they pour the operators on us. And me and Margaret came with about 3 or 4 months. The operator came and said, “Pay them before back time, and then put them back to work.” I had decided all that time what do with the money and all the time. When I went out to the plant and Roane Anderson was behind me. Of course he got a call and told me, said, “If I get you back on at your job, would you take it. Back before time pay. I told them they yeah, but I told him I would just do it. He called the office and told them that I was going out there. And the lady told me, “Kattie, step outside,” and I stepped outside while she was talking and she said, “That was a call for you. You have your job back with full time pay.” Me and Willie came back, back to the plant and got that check. That was when I was working for the City of Oak Ridge. I spent 30 years at the City of Oak Ridge.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Well we need to change out tape now.
[End of Interview]

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ORAL HISTORY OF KATTIE LUE STRICKLAND
Interviewed by Chris Albrecht
Filmed by Rick Greene
Significant Productions
July 1, 2005
Transcribed by Jordan Reed
MR. ALBRECHT: What kind of job did you have when you came up here?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I first come up here, I hired in to J.A. Jones, sweeping, some raking up sawdust and other just sweeping it up, over and over and over. That was my job.
MR. ALBRECHT: But that paid better than working in the library at Auburn?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. But when we first started working up here we were making $27.00 a week. And then $37.00, if I worked overtime.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have an opportunity to work overtime quite a bit?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked every Saturday, was overtime.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that about it. Where did you live when you came to Oak Ridge? Tell me a little bit about where you lived. I know it was in a hutment and there were other women in there, so tell us a little bit about where you lived and how many women were in there, that sort of thing.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, the hut we were in there was four ‘cause the room was pretty big and had four beds. From that we moved in the pen, is they called it. Or the guards would take the women.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, you were in the area protected by the guards, did you have a curfew? Did you have to be back in by a certain time, that kind of thing?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, we could go out any time, but at night, they locked the gate. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: So, at the same time, where was your husband living?
MRS. STRICKLAND: He was living in a hut.
MR. ALBRECHT: But you couldn’t live together.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No.
MR. ALBRECHT: Address that a little bit. In your own words, you both lived in huts, we couldn’t live together. I was in the pen. Just kind of string the whole story together for me.
MRS. STRICKLAND: He was in hut and we was in the pen. Of course I could go to his hut and could stay until 10 or 11 o’clock, and then we had to leave. We had to run back, that’s when I was living in the huts. That’s it.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Great. How many men were in the hut that your husband lived in?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Four.
MR. ALBRECHT: Four, okay. Did you and your husband eat in the cafeteria? Is that how you got your meals?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked in the cafeteria, but I didn’t eat the food. I ate it one time and it made me sick. So I started cooking in the hut.
MR. ALBRECHT: Tell us a little bit about cooking in a hut. Now we know there wasn’t a nice cook stove in there, there wasn’t a nice range. How did you cook in a hut?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, we had a big heater and when it gets red hot I make up my biscuits and turn them to the back and they’d brown and then when they were brown on the bottom, I’d turn them to the front and they’d brown. They browned pretty. (Laughter) FBI come and eat dinner with me and my husband.
MR. ALBRECHT: The FBI? Is that what you said?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want to do something here, I want you to, this was the pan you used right, for the biscuits?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want you to kind of tell me the story again and I want you to hold this up and say, “This is the pan I made the biscuits in”, when you tell a story like that. I think that would be a wonderful way to do that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Which way? You want me to hold it like this?
MR. ALBRECHT: Well, you can just start telling the story and then just kind of hold it like that. So talk about, hold it down in your lap like I’ve got this right now. Can you see that? Or do you want to keep that out of the picture and then let her lift it up?
MR. GREENE: Yeah, I’ve got her pretty wide. So yeah, we’re good.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. So once you start talking you can lift it up. Tell me again about baking the biscuits on the stove and how you had to turn it. Then you can show us how you turned the pan.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I baked my biscuits on the stove. I turned them up to brown them on the bottom, and then when they brown on the bottom, I hold them and let them brown on the top.
MR. ALBRECHT: I want you to say, “And this is the pan, this is the actual pan I used.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: And this is the pan I used years ago, baking biscuits.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great.
MR. GREENE: I have a question. How did you keep them from falling out?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, I had a stick kind of, you know. I propped it behind the pan from the floor and they baked. And then when I turned them, I propped the stick right here, and they browned on the bottom.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now, I’ll get that pan out of your hands now. That’s a great way to show that pan off. Tell me, whoops, I lost my microphone here. Mr. Minter told me that you use to make biscuits to give to the guards so that they would look the other way, so you could go out at night. Tell us a little about that please. (Laughter)
MRS. STRICKLAND: The FBI told me I could stay with my husband until 10 o’clock or 11, except them young guards come by there and make you get out. He told me when I went home to bring my marriage certificate and they couldn’t put me out. Said ‘cause he know how it feel if somebody came making his wife get out of where he was.
MR. ALBRECHT: So was there any truth to the story that you baked biscuits so they would look the other way? Did you bribe the guards?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, I didn’t try to bribe them. (Laughter) They just smelled them.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great. I asked you about the cafeteria and you said you didn’t eat there but one time because it made you sick.
MRS. STRICKLAND: One time.
MR. ALBRECHT: You said it was bad. How many cafeterias did they have for blacks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: The cafeteria was for everybody. And I worked with J.A. Jones in the cafeteria and I still couldn’t eat the food, for what they had.
MR. ALBRECHT: Was it because of the way it was fixed or because it was food you weren’t use to eating?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I just couldn’t eat it. Least I was afraid to eat any more ‘cause it made me sick.
MR. ALBRECHT: So tell me again, one of the questions that Will had on here, he specifically said on here, “How did you visit your husband?” So that was an issue of you could stay until a certain hour and then the guards started letting you stay, was that it? Tell us a little bit about how you got to visit with your husband.
MRS. STRICKLAND: They know to go and leave about 8 o’clock, the women. So they beat the guards coming to put them out. So my husband come to see me sometimes. One time he come to the pen and he got hung in the top of the wire. We had wire way up. I heard somebody bumping out there and I went out there and his shirt was hung. I said, “What you doing out here? You trying to get into the pen or something?” (Laughter) I got him unhung and went to his hut.
MR. GREENE: Chris, let me. I’m not sure why it was that you all couldn’t stay together. Could you explain that a little bit, why y’all were living in different places?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well at that time, it was so many until they called it protecting the women in the pens with the guards in there. They didn’t like women to stay. The men huts in one section and the women huts in another. When I first came, mine wasn’t far from my husband. All the men was on one side and the women was back on this side.
MR. GREENE: Was it just because they didn’t have enough housing? Was that the reason they separated you?
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, women stayed with the men. All the men suppose to live in a hut with nothing but men. That’s why men and women couldn’t live. But we moved to the barrack and he let all married people stay in the barrack. Thank God that was good. From there we moved back up here to Roane Anderson.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did you have to live in the pen before you got to go to the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well we lived in the barracks about a year and a half before we had to move to Roane Anderson up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about the huts? How long were you in the huts before you got to go to the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oh, about three years.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Back up and tell us that. Say, “We lived in the huts for about three years before we got to go to the barracks.” And tell it like that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We lived in the huts for about three years before we went to the barrack.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you got to go to the barracks, was that when the war ended?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Let me see. I was working when he called and said the war was over. We were still living in the barrack.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’ve got another question here. This is on another subject, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there is a story behind this or he wouldn’t have put this in there. He says, “How did you make extra money?”
MRS. STRICKLAND: (Laughter) Well, cigarettes were lost. And all my husband’s friends didn’t smoke. They would buy them and give them to my husband. I had a great big ol’ freezer lined with tin. I put about 8 cases of beer, watermelons, sweet milk, and we made extra money by selling the beer.
MR. ALBRECHT: Where did you get the beer to sell?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We would come up here to uptown, I forgot what uptown is now, at that time it was Value Mart and you wasn’t allowed two cases. All my husband’s friends get him a case.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you had the beer distributorship.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had so much money. At night we’d pull the curtains and count it. We had the bed just covered with more money than I ever seen. Then we send it home.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s a wonderful story. Another thing he’s got on here, “Tell us about riding the bus.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, I told my mother we were riding the train every day to work. I didn’t want to tell her it was a freight train. We rode the freight train; we had to go about, about half to get on the train. He’d carry us there and some on the weekend. If you missed that load, you wait and catch the next load.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was it like when the weather was bad, in the winter and stuff, trying to get on that train?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oh, I be running so much snow weather I’d be, some come over my head. I’d run so fast to get on the train, some come over my shoes, over my head. Rain or shine, you had to be there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did anyone that you know, that you worked with or lived with in the huts or anything? The question here is did anyone get in trouble and how were they treated if they did get in trouble?
MRS. STRICKLAND: They would take them out the gate. Take them to Clinton, Kingston.
MR. ALBRECHT: Let’s start over, tell me, if you wouldn’t mind, if you’d say, “When people got in trouble…” or something like that so we know what you’re saying.
MRS. STRICKLAND: When people got in trouble, they would take them out the gate and take the badge and they couldn’t come back in.
MR. ALBRECHT: So they were just gone.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Just gone.
MR. ALBRECHT: When did, when were you able to send for your children to come up?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When it was? I don’t know what year when I went and brought them up here.
MRS. PATTERSON: First time, we came I think it was ’47. We came to live in ’48, ’49, I think it was.
MR. ALBRECHT: So, ’49 was when you came up here permanently.
MRS. PATTERSON: Yeah.
MR. ALBRECHT: If you could relay that, that you were finally able to bring your children up in 1949.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I brought my children in 1949. In ’49.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you have a home then?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We lived in the flattop. That’s when I brought my children up here. It had two rooms and a kitchen.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did it have sewers and running water? Did it have electricity?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had an ice box. When we were in the flattop we had a hot water heater and running water in the flattop.
MR. ALBRECHT: Quite an improvement over the huts.
MRS. STRICKLAND: That’s right.
MR. ALBRECHT: Let me look at my questions here. While I’m looking at these questions, thinking about it, I’m sure you’ve got some other stories, some things that you remember specifically about working during the project and so forth, that I hadn’t even thought about asking yet. Tell us some other stories.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I worked in the streakler part (???) and we swept them floors until it looked just like a looking glass and I was there when the motors start running. We were scared to death. All them belts went to running. Everybody was scared, but it turned out all right because they didn’t know that something would happen that would be wrong. I started not to come to work that day because it was going to be a sad day when the day come they turned it on.
MR. ALBRECHT: Did you or any of your friends really have any idea of what they were doing? What the whole project was about?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I sure didn’t ‘cause they said, “See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing”.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s good. Let’s do that one again, and say, “We didn’t know what all the project was about”, and tell us about the “See nothing. Say nothing.”
MRS. STRICKLAND: We didn’t know what all the projects were about ‘cause when you entered the gate, that sign sitting up there, “See nothing. Say nothing.” So we just worked.
MR. ALBRECHT: That’s great. You do a good job of working that into a statement where it covers the question. We have a lot of people that don’t do that so well. I appreciate you for that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: As much as I can remember.
MRS. ROBERSON: Ask her about giving a day toward the bomb.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok, good. Tell us about giving a day’s wages to help develop the bomb. What do you remember about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I give two days on the atomic bomb. I just got my stub.
MR. ALBRECHT: So say it again so it’s real plan. You worked for two days, but you gave up the pay for those two days to help…
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah, I gave up two days to help on the atomic bomb. Is that good enough?
MR. GREENE: Did you know what you were doing at the time? Did you know that it was going toward a bomb? How did they present it to you, this idea?
MRS. STRICKLAND: They had a sheet you signed, and it said, “For the atomic bomb.” And that’s all.
MRS. PATTERSON: Did you know what an atomic bomb was?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Some of them wouldn’t give nothing.
MRS. ROBERSON: You knew it was a bomb, Grandmamma?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yeah, they wanted everybody to donate a day’s wage to the atomic bomb.
MRS. PATTERSON: Did you know what an atomic bomb was?
MRS. STRICKLAND: All I know was, I heard them and I knew they was dangerous, but we donated.
MR. ALBRECHT: I got another question for you. It’s back to the living when you were in the pens and that kind of thing. I can’t remember if it was Mr. Minter that told me about this, but did you have any stories or did you hear about or help others get to be with husbands and boyfriends? I remember a story, something about lifting somebody over a fence. I sure want to hear that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I stayed in the pen with four women and I woke up and the guards had the light turned on me. He said, “You ain’t got no company now.” He said, “You’ll have some after a while.” And they come down that street running and cussing and sitting there talking. Got nothing on me. I’m going back. Few minutes later they all sneak back out. They say he got up on the bed when they go round searching you know. Looking all around the bed and didn’t see any woman in there. And they went back and stayed. Them guards sure wouldn’t get them out of the bed. You could hear them running down the plank walk, fussing and cussing. I never did.
MR. ALBRECHT: Was there, you and your husband sold beer. Was there other liquor available?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Happy Valley was over there with plenty of beer, and cigarettes too. But on Sunday, they just left it, not go down to the store; they’d buy it from us. We was selling $1.00 a bottle. Cigarettes, I sold cigarettes for $4.00 and he said he wanted one, and he had his girlfriend sitting there, and he said, “And give her one.” That was $4.00. We said we sold $2.00 a cigarette and that was $4.00 for two.
MRS. ROBERSON: One cigarette?
MR. ALBRECHT: For one cigarette?
MRS. STRICKLAND: One cigarette.
MR. ALBRECHT: Oh, jeez. No wonder you had money.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I opened the bills, but my hand just got tired. I said, “You got to count. You take it.” ‘Cause they’d be back by. He was amazed that the store down there then, but they wouldn’t buy it. But it be closed on the weekend. So they’d buy it up ‘cause they knew the store done be closed, but they wouldn’t buy nothing from the store. There would be so many people that it filled a hut full. Like you couldn’t stir, people wouldn’t know when a snake come up in here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Amazing. When you were working on the project, did you attend church? If so, where?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. When I got on swing shift, from 8 to 4, 4 to 12, 12 to 8 the next morning, when I swing off, then I be four days. Each one of us had a Sunday off a piece to go to church. I took the fourth Sunday ‘cause that’s when our church up here would be open. I had one Sunday off a month.
MR. ALBRECHT: What church was it that you attended?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Oak Valley. Same church name as it is now.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Back it up and say, “I went to Oak Valley Church”, so we know what you’re talking about.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I went to Oak Valley Church.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you think when you finally found out what all these projects were all about? When you finally found out it was an atomic bomb? What were your thoughts about that? What did you think about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to think, but when they announced it was an atomic bomb. I kind of thought it was good. I said, “Well, we got an atomic bomb.” Now everybody got it. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: Kind of hard to guess when everybody said, “Hey. We made an atomic bomb.” Everybody probably looked at each other and said, “What’s an atomic bomb?” (Laughter)
MRS. STRICKLAND: Really I didn’t know what. (inaudible)
MR. ALBRECHT: What else?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I first come up here, it wasn’t nothing but plank walks and rats. We come here from work, they put that stuff out to kill them, they done have racked them up in piles. Walking down the walkway one would come out with his tail that long. I hadn’t never known. When you clean off then fields and have clean ground, then rats from the fields, oh my Lord. That was when we was at K-25. Plank walks and mud. ‘Bout really walked on the ground because everybody walked on the plank walks so they were muddy too. The people that came late, they came to a beautiful place. We came to a mess. Finally, it’s a beautiful place now.
MR. ALBRECHT: Talking about the planks that made me think of something. Oh, during the summer and during the winter those huts they weren’t insulated, they didn’t have, you know. Tell us a little about how cold was it? How hot did it get in the summer? It must have been brutal.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, they had them heaters in there you know. Every man had a blanket and a thing that ran around his bed, and around his bed. Those heaters really kept it hot in there. You had to open the door sometimes because you never could lock your door, you just go to work and left it open so the maids could come in and clean. One thing, we paid $1.50 a week and got our linens changed twice a week.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about in the summer? What was it like in the summer to live in those?
MRS. STRICKLAND: It was nice. We go to walk out in the shade trees. We had a good time.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do for recreation like in the evenings if you weren’t working? What did you typically do?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well they had a recreation and mess hall. You could go up and sit around.
MR. ALBRECHT: What did you do when you sat around?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had a car. We just rode around sometimes.
MR. ALBRECHT: You and your husband had a car, you say.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you just go ride around. Did you go into Knoxville?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes. Uptown. After we moved up here, we had a car when we was at K-25. We had a Dodge. I never will forget it. My husband ran it up on a telegram pole. He didn’t hurt it. You know that big wide part on the telephone on them poles. He wasn’t paying no attention, and he was sitting up on that wire. The men’s come and pulled it down. We had a Dodge then. That was a pretty thing. So every year it got better and better. So we moved from the huts to the flattop and the flattops down here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now when you say “down here”, did you move into this house.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No, we moved into the one right down the street here. Then the cars come too much down that a way. My daughter and they didn’t like down there. I moved there because the grass had come up there. And the grass down here had just been planted, you know. So the boys would stay here and they were going to Knoxville, and they said, “You want this house? Go on up to the office and put in for it now.” So I went up and put in for it. And we moved from down there to here.
MR. ALBRECHT: Now by the time you lived in this house, the war was over, your children were with you, and did they go to school nearby? Where was it at? What can you tell me about that?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, mine went right over here to Scarboro. Some of them went to that school out yonder. What’s its name?
MRS. PATTERSON: Austin High School.
MRS. STRICKLAND: None of mine graduated there. they graduated over here. And the other’s, they made segregation and the others graduated uptown there.
MR. ALBRECHT: What other questions am I missing that I should be asking?
MRS. ROBERSON: I would like to know how she felt about being a black in Oak Ridge and being discriminated against and having to live separate. Not having the same rights as the general population.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Did you hear most of that? What was it like to be here as a black when there was segregation and you had separate facilities, and it wasn’t necessarily equal at all. Address that.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We couldn’t eat from the, the 10 cent store had a thing where you come in and eat at and you could buy what we want to buy, but we had to take it in our hand and go. We couldn’t sit up on the stool. They didn’t want you to wash at their washhouse. And one day we walked and them Ku Klux Klan was over there and I was scared of those men. So I looked over and saw all the police over there. So we marched at the washhouse. You couldn’t do nothing like that. You couldn’t drink out the fountain or wash your clothes. It was just about like Alabama then with segregation.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned Ku Klux Klan was that during the war or after the war?
MRS. STRICKLAND: That was after the war.
MRS. PATTERSON: In the ‘60’s.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok.
MRS. STRICKLAND: But they still try to keep the black from the washer and dryers and from drinking the fountain. Sitting on the buses.
MR. ALBRECHT: What about like things on the bus, theaters, did you have to, and tell us again, like your starting over again, did they make you sit in a special place in the theater, did you have to ride in the back of the bus or whatever.
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had to ride on the back of the bus when we were going to work, when they started running the buses. We still had to sit on the back. And the whites in the front. Until one day when this black lady sat down right behind the driver. And the bus was loaded and all but one man, just stood up there. And the bus driver just stopped and he told her she got to get up and let him sit down. She said, “I’m not getting up.” And then two colored men come from the back back there and they managed to get that driver so mad. He said, “You better stop.” You know we had a thing we could pull and he hadn’t been stopping. He said, “Whenever somebody pull that thing you better stop and let them off.” And he said, “Besides that you better change that shirt you got on.” This boy said, “I’ll get him right in the bottom.” And then, “I’ll get them right here.” Every day after that that man was so nice driving us to the plant. (Laughter) I was scared kind of because I didn’t know what those two black men were going to do. I mean they stopped the bus and told her to get up and she had to move and then they came from the back of the bus, you want her to get up and let the man sit down. That was when we were working at the plant too. Because we had to stop riding the train and start riding buses.
MR. ALBRECHT: What was better? Riding the train or riding the bus?
MRS. STRICKLAND: The bus.
MR. ALBRECHT: I’d think so.
MRS. STRICKLAND: See when done stood up when we got on and no seats. It was like a freight train, packing every booth until it got full. And then you stand up going and stand up coming back.
MR. ALBRECHT: After a long day of work, you have to stand up all the way back.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Right.
MR. ALBRECHT: How long did it take to get from the home to the job riding the buses, or the trains, or whatever?
MRS. STRICKLAND: From where we load on at, it wasn’t too far. About a little further than that house down there, going down that street and then they brought us back there to all the huts and things. It wasn’t too far from there.
MR. ALBRECHT: Rick?
MR. GREENE: I guess the question that I have, you know one of the things that we’re looking at is that were trying to explore is the role that minorities, specifically blacks played in the Manhattan Project. What, as far as the contribution to that tremendous thing that was an accomplished. I mean it was an incredible thing that was accomplished here, when you look back at that, do you have a since of pride, how do you feel about that whole thing, knowing that you were a part of it? And I guess to expand that, how you see the role of blacks, how they contributed to that project.
MRS. STRICKLAND: I thought it was great. I was proud to be there because I had been here and I know all about it. God just brought us to it. Now in the cafeteria, when I worked, of course we packed lunches all night until about 4 o’clock in the morning. Didn’t have no separate of the black and white coming through the line getting their lunches for them to carry to work with them. But in other places, they couldn’t be with them.
MR. ALBRECHT: When you lived in the barracks and got to move out of the huts into the barracks, were the barracks, were they integrated, segregated. Were they all black people in the barracks.
MRS. STRICKLAND: It was black and white.
MR. ALBRECHT: So go back and tell us that. The barracks were integrated then.
MRS. STRICKLAND: The barracks were integrated. They were for the married peoples. If you wasn’t married, you couldn’t move in there.
MR. ALBRECHT: How much room did you have in the barracks?
MRS. STRICKLAND: We had a big nice room, me and my husband. I never will forget it. I was coming home that next day and I woke up that morning and I shook with a hand, my little grandchild and I couldn’t come home. Because it was raining and snowing wet that morning fair. And I was getting ready to clock out and come out the buildings. Snow was knee deep. That’s the way it was back then. So the other people’s get that now. And we don’t get as much as we use to. I thought it was the baddest place I ever come to when I first got up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: You mentioned the mud. I understand when it wasn’t muddy it was dusty. It was always one or the other.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Muddy, my goodness. It would be so muddy on the plank walk, I’d slip and get on the ground and walk to the huts.
MRS. ROBERSON: I was wondering if she had any relationships with any white people, during that particular time.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok, yeah, during the time of the project did you have any relationships with any white people?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes, all them men welding we were friendly with them. They were friendly with us. At night there wouldn’t be but two of us going to work at night to keep the cleaning stuff. We laugh and talk and everybody went to the same bathroom at the plant. You didn’t have no other choice.
MR. ALBRECHT: So you didn’t have separate restrooms for white and for colored then, as the signs said at the time.
MRS. STRICKLAND: No. 200 around the building. I clean 150, and my friend cleaned another 50. There wasn’t maybe ten that was in what we had to do. I didn’t do nothing much. Just wanted to get in there and sleep. (Laughter)
MR. ALBRECHT: Valeria, you’re a good source of questions. What else have you got there?
MRS. ROBERSON: How did it feel to be away from your daughters for all that time?
MRS. STRICKLAND: My children?
MRS. ROBERSON: Yes.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Goodness.
MRS. ROBERSON: Did it bother you?
MRS. STRICKLAND: When I found out where we were going, I went to crying. I was crying for so far from my children. When I got use to it. It wasn’t as far as I thought. Oh, I missed my children. Maybe if I never got up here. My uncle was here from Florida when my husband came home and she said, “I ain’t going to keep the children. You’ve got to stay here.” She wanted me to be there. He said, “You let that girl go on back with her husband. And you keep the children.” Her brother did. She decided to keep the children and I came on back with my husband when he came back. He would come pretty regular. He sent his check home every week. I go to the Western Union and the lady said, “You just lucky.” She said, “What kind of man you got? I don’t want to be nosy, but is it your boyfriend or your husband?” I said, “That’s my husband.” She said, “He’s the best husband I have ever seen. He don’t miss sending that home every week.” I go to the Western Union there down at the college. I worked in the main library there. I go there and that check would be there.
MR. ALBRECHT: That was with him making a lot more money and you were still making money. Were you able to save money? Where did the money go?
MRS. STRICKLAND: Well, sent ours back home and Momma put it in the bank. And a boy came from over where we was and every week my husband and I had a lot of money you know. You could buy a ticket for food, because he would drink it up and gamble it off. He said, “How do you save money in a place like Auburn?” Because we had some money when we came up here, in the bank. And we sent every cent we made home. Momma put it in the bank. The money wasn’t kept. I just wore blue jeans and khaki pants to work. I maybe had a piece or two I put on the weekends. But people were stealing stuff so bad, we went to Chattanooga and got a trunk and a chain. My husband had to carry a trunk to the depot. There were so many in a room. And when they leave to go on to work they have to check out and leave. Shoot, they got all them folks stuff when they be gone. So we didn’t buy nothing much. What we had we wanted to keep it, so we put it in the trunk and locked it to the post of the bed. My husband said, “They can’t carry this bed down to the depot.” (Laughter) A lot of them were doing that. Folks go on to work. And they’d pack up their things and be gone.
MR. ALBRECHT: When the project, the Manhattan Project kind of wound down, the bomb had been built and so forth and a lot of people were leaving at that point, what made you decided to stay here instead of going back to Auburn, Alabama?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I like it here then. I liked it up here and I didn’t want to go back down there, so, we decided we would stay on here. I didn’t give it a thought about going back. My children also loved it up here.
MR. ALBRECHT: You had your family here by then.
MRS. STRICKLAND: Yes.
MR. ALBRECHT: We’ve got about four minutes left on this particular tape before we put another one in. Anything else you can think of that we should ask? Valeria, I appreciate, I think more of the nuts and bolts. You hit on more the emotional things. So I appreciate your input.
MRS. STRICKLAND: She’s got pretty good thinkers. We wasn’t making much when we started until we got a union. When we got the union the boss man told me, “You sign right down there when you go down there.” They let us go down to the office and sign we were here. I said, (inaudible) “You fool!” (Laughter) he said, “Come here, Kattie Strickland. Where you sign at?” I said, “Right there.” “You fool! I told you to sign.” I didn’t do that to Dale. He was a good farmer. We drunk up (inaudible). Both of them gave us a big party. Down here to the camp operation and the boy would say, “Let’s drink up and (inaudible).” So we got a CIO and then we got more. My farmer told me, he said, “You don’t,” he said, “The white ladies going to take your job and what you’re doing.” A white lady bought me. She was so old we helped her every night. We had to clean up her (inaudible) because she couldn’t do it. And she bought me and my father ‘bout had a fit. He said, “They’re taking all my best hands, making me keep the building clean.” And the lady, she was so old, he begged her to go and let me stay. And she could hardly get around and she wouldn’t hardly do it. So she bought me. But because I stayed with the plant so long, they tried to get me back, but I wouldn’t go. I was enjoying doing what I was doing after I had quit working at the plant.
MR. ALBRECHT: What were you doing when you quit working for the plant?
MRS. STRICKLAND: I was working for MSI.
MR. ALBRECHT: What is that? I’m sorry.
MRS. STRICKLAND: MSI and then I worked for JA Jones, Damage Moore Company. Then they pour the operators on us. And me and Margaret came with about 3 or 4 months. The operator came and said, “Pay them before back time, and then put them back to work.” I had decided all that time what do with the money and all the time. When I went out to the plant and Roane Anderson was behind me. Of course he got a call and told me, said, “If I get you back on at your job, would you take it. Back before time pay. I told them they yeah, but I told him I would just do it. He called the office and told them that I was going out there. And the lady told me, “Kattie, step outside,” and I stepped outside while she was talking and she said, “That was a call for you. You have your job back with full time pay.” Me and Willie came back, back to the plant and got that check. That was when I was working for the City of Oak Ridge. I spent 30 years at the City of Oak Ridge.
MR. ALBRECHT: Ok. Well we need to change out tape now.
[End of Interview]